Re: Patch: Remove gcc dependency in definition of inline functions

On 2/10/2010 7:12 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
> Kurt, you seem to be more or less impervious to advice :-(.

Thank you for reviewing my patch. It is a rare honor to
have my personal qualities reviewed here as well.

Since this forum is archived for posterity, I suppose I
must point out that I have in fact been responsive to all
the advice that has been offered here. I have answered
each comment fully and politely. I have acted upon most
of the suggestions, and have revised my small patch
accordingly and resubmitted it twice (now thrice,
incorporating this comment of yours).

Admittedly I have used my own judgment in how to adopt these
sometimes conflicting suggestions; and have explained the
rationale for my choices. Everyone may judge whether my
choices and explanations are satisfactory and continue the
dialogue if they are not yet satisfied. By sincerely
engaging in such a process, consensus may be reached.

All contributors to the pg_hackers list are well advised to
be impervious to brusque and sometimes rude dismissals, which
seem to be de rigueur here. However, the evidence of this
thread shows that I have been far from impervious to advice.

By the way, suggestions which must be carried out without
question are "orders", not "advice". When a statement,
meant to be imperative, is phrased softly as advice, it can
easily be mistaken as optional by newcomers who may not have
fully grasped the prevailing reality. Thus, commands are
best stated in clear language.

> Please just make the thing be "inline" and have configure define
> USE_INLINE, as per previous discussion.

Just now I have resubmitted according to your instruction.

> Cluttering the code with nonstandard constructs is not
> good for readability.

Agreed. But any program consists of definitions of new
identifiers, data structures, macros, and conventions or
guidelines for their use. What, or who, differentiates
ordinary programming practice, such as typedefs, from
"nonstandard constructs"?

> More, it is likely to confuse syntax-aware editors and
> pgindent, neither of which will read any of the discussion
> or commit messages.

Good point. This had not been mentioned before. It works
alright with the syntax-aware editors that I use, and I
haven't had occasion to run pgindent, so I didn't think of
this earlier.

Does the same problem exist with the PGDLLIMPORT macro
defined in postgres.h? It, too, is used in the same
syntactic niche where "inline" would be placed.

Regards,
... kurt